The New Testament says Jesus walked on water in the Sea of Galilee, but a new study suggests he really strolled on a patch of floating ice, a scientist says.

Florida State University’s Doron Nof said the study points to a rare confluence of conditions ripe for development of a unique phenomenon he calls springs ice.

Ice could have formed on the cold freshwater surface, Nof and colleagues said, when already chilly temperatures briefly plunged during one of two long cold spells between 2,500 and 1,500 years ago.

The Sea is located in what is now northern Israel, and known as Lake Kinneret by modern-day Israelis.

An ice patch floating on the small lake’s surface would have been hard to distinguish from the liquid water surrounding it, the scientists argued. This water came from salty springs along the lake’s western shore in Tabgha, an area where many archeological findings related to Jesus have been documented.

“Unique freezing processes probably happened in that region only a handful of times during the last 12,000 years,” Nof said. “We leave to others the question of whether or not our research explains the biblical account.”

It’s not the first time Nof has offered scientific explanations for watery miracles. An expert in oceanography and limnology––the study of freshwater, saltwater and brackish environments—he made headlines in 1992 with a theory on the biblical parting of the Red Sea. He attributed this event to high winds and fluctuations in atmospheric pressure that swept water into a vertical wall.

His latest research appears in the April issue of the Journal of Paleolimnology, a scientific publication.

Nof and his colleagues studied a part of Lake Kinneret comprising about 10,000 square feet (929 square meters) near the salty springs that empty into it. They used evidence, drawn from sediments, of past Mediterranean Sea surface temperatures, along with other tools.

Their study, they said, suggested a blast of frigid air could have hit the lake, lowering its temperature to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 4 Celsius) for at least two days. That coincided with a chill that had already settled for a century or more and quite possibly encompassed Jesus’ decades of life.

Thus, a floating ice patch could develop above the water emerging from the salty springs, Nof argued. Throughout recent geological history this would typically occur once per millennium on average, he added. But in Jesus’s time the prevailing climate may have favored more frequent springs ice, about once in 30 to 160 years.

Floating in liquid water, this ice could be virtually impossible for distant observers to discern, especially if subsequent rains smoothed its surface, he argued. And 2,000 years ago, even people with a better view might not have recognized a phenomenon so rare in their corner of the world.

In today’s climate, the chance of springs ice forming in northern Israel has dropped to less than once in 10,000 years, Nof said.


Courtesy Florida State University
and World Science staff

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Science writer Jack Lucentini is founder and editor of the World Science science news webzine. He has worked as a staff writer at three daily newspapers, and as a freelance science writer for a range of publications including The Washington Post, Discover magazine and The Scientist magazine. He earned his bachelor's degree at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio in 1993.